Moses, The Radical Moderate

The Contradictions of Moral Leadership

“A manifesto, if it is strong, may at most fanaticize, but only a work of art can liberate.” (Thomas Mann, Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man)

But Moses appealed to the LORD, saying, “The Israelites would not listen to me; how then should Pharaoh heed me, a man of impeded speech (arel s’fatayim)!” (Exodus 6:12)

It’s ironic that the purported author and protagonist of the Torah, the leader and lawgiver of the Israelites, Moses, believes himself to be a poor communicator. He can’t persuade the people to follow him and he can’t persuade the king of Egypt to submit to him. Moses is too lofty, too idealistic, perhaps, to adopt the Machiavellian personality needed to flatter the people and intimidate Pharaoh. Alternatively, he is too much of an outsider for both the oppressed and the oppressor, too “privileged” to be taken seriously by the downtrodden, too marginal, too “unprofessional,” to be taken seriously by the royal court.

The Torah sets up Moses’s shortcomings well to make his leadership seem all the more remarkable. In foregrounding his flaws, or self-perceived flaws, it also reminds us that Moses is a channel for divine justice, but not a God himself. The irony of this point is highlighted when God tells Moses, “See, I place you in the role of God to Pharaoh” (Ex. 7:1). Two points jump out from the odd formulation: 1) God is handing over God’s power to another, meaning that even as Moses appears God-like it is on account of a higher source; Moses is Interim Executive Director, if you will. 2) Moses is made into a God only relative to Pharaoh. Since Pharaoh perceives himself to be a God, Moses comes to unsettle Pharaoh’s self-worship. But to see Moses as himself a God would only be to perpetuate the problem, turning Moses into a new Pharaoh. Moses comes to destroy idols, not to replace one set with another. His genuine self-deprecation is the key to understanding how he pulls this off.

Moses is more right than he knows when he objects to his prophetic appointment. First, Pharaoh will not in fact listen to him—by God’s design. The Exodus drama is staged in such a way as to heighten conflict between Egypt and Israel rather than resolve it through diplomacy. The magnificent plagues that Moses facilitates have a short shelf-life, seeing as Pharaoh’s heart is hardened. For the rest of the Torah, Moses will lead a people through the wilderness who protest at every turn, a people, moreover, for whom miracles are never enough. Moses isn’t simply being humble when he abjures from his prophetic role, he’s asking a question of God, and of us: What’s the point of being a voice of sanity in a world where none can listen? Why do signs and wonders when they will only fall on hardened hearts? This is a question not just about Pharaoh, but about the Israelites, too.

The Midrash imagines that Moses has a speech-impediment, a coal-burnt tongue, a lisp, a stutter. The strange locution, “uncircumcised lips” (arel s’fatayim), suggests to commentators a kind of physiological defect. But Moses may not be to blame for his inability to move his audience. It may be that the conditions which render his lips apparently unfit are social. In fact, it is Moses’s social unfitness that makes him the perfect candidate for leadership.

Rabbinic views on circumcision—as a metaphor—are paradoxical. On the one hand, a circumcision is a sacrificial act, an act of removal. It is also a sign of social distinction and convention. It is a mark of difference. It is an expensive “signal,” a literal form of “skin in the game” that suggests loyalty to the covenant. But in the hands of the sages, circumcision is not merely a social convention, it’s also a universal ideal. Adam was born circumcised, according to rabbinic lore. Primordial man, in a state of nature, came into the world with the mark of the covenant. Only after the Expulsion from Eden did circumcision become a commandment rather than a condition.

Read metaphorically, the paradox of circumcision suggests a conflict between two ideals, on the one hand, the ideal of nature, on the other hand, the ideal of regulating one’s nature. Naturalism without regulation is brutal. But regulation that undoes or stamps out nature is not only artifice, but “civilization and its discontents.” The question posed by circumcision is how to create something that maintains the best of nature, in the sense of innocence and purity, without simply giving into nature, in the sense of amorality and animality. To be born circumcised is to combine the modern notion of the social construct with the ancient one of adhering to one’s nature.

In a literal sense, it makes no sense to describe Moses’s lips as uncircumcised. In a spiritual sense, though, the text suggests the inverse of the paradox described above. Moses is both too natural and not natural enough to lead (and this is what makes him, precisely, fit to lead). What do I mean by this? A suave leader would know how to move and manipulate people by appealing to their psychology, but at the same time he would be failing since he would be letting the baser aspects of human nature remain unchanged. Recall that the literal meaning of the Greek word “demagogue” just means “one who leads the people.” Moses’s so-called poor communication skills are the result of his proximity to truth and justice in a world that knows only rhetoric and power.

But is truth enough? Is justice enough? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that, ultimately they must prevail, and in certain instances it is enough just to be a witness to them, a martyr. But no in the sense that an idealism that refuses to engage with the world on its terms is no longer leadership, but quietism. And the prophet is not appointed to be a monk who sits in solitude pondering the timeless truth that “desire is the root of suffering.” The prophet is appointed to talk to Pharaoh, even a Pharaoh who won’t and can’t listen. The prophet is appointed to address a people, not to throw up his hands in the face of their stubbornness, or simply shout at them, but to refine his capacity to awaken their own sense of truth and justice.

We may have a responsibility to call out lies, but we may have a deeper responsibility to build a world where truth prevails, which might sometimes mean holding our tongue, or speaking in ways that are more likely to be received. The subtle difference between these is that in the first case one can take refuge in one’s righteous point of view while ignoring the more pragmatic challenge: “Now what?” The prophet who wants to succeed must “circumcise” his lips, in the rabbinic sense of regulating his speech, not just spouting whatever comes to mind.

The Exodus story is about a king who wrongly believed himself to be God and was overpowered by the true God. But it is, more critically, about the meta-miracle that miracles don’t work, that supernatural occurrences are ephemeral, and that the only place where real change happens is the human heart. The rhetorician can stir up a crowd in the moment, but where does the “infotainment” go afterwards. What do the people do after the rousing speech? The failure of words, like the failure of miracles, is not the result of any impediment in Moses. It is the failure of persuasion, more generally, which Socrates likens to coercion. Only speech which speaks to the soul, miracles delivered to the heart, can cause a person to transform. The long march towards liberation is not simply one away from external oppression, but towards a sense of agency and wisdom.

Can wisdom be taught? Can agency be imposed? Can justice be mandated? Moses is right that he won’t be listened to, but not because he is an unskilled speaker. Rather, his message, by definition, is one that can be accepted only when people realize it for themselves, and don’t simply take it on someone else’s authority. And yet we have to start somewhere. The paradox of (un)circumcised lips is the same one that plagued the ancient philosophers who sought to grasp the relationship between truth and rhetoric, righteousness and victory. To posit a conflictual relationship between them is to invite hostility to the world. To posit a harmony between them is to naively brush over the conflict between the tyrant and the thinker, the Svengali and the sage.

Thus, Moses is the perfect leader because he is the perfectly imperfect one, caught between the natural and the conventional, the primal and the regulative, the philosophical and the rhetorical. Moses knows that he will fail, but confronts Pharaoh anyways. He knows the people won’t be free until they want to be free themselves, but advocates for them anyways. He knows that faith is kept alive by daily commitment, not one-off spectacles, yet raises his staff anyways.

Good leaders are full of contradictions. For they must be both radical and moderate. Good leaders may write manifestos, but their living examples are less dogmatic and more complex. The prophet wins not simply by saying what is true, but by becoming a work of art.

Shabbat Shalom and Happy New Year,

Zohar Atkins @ Etz Hasadeh

P.S.—If you appreciate this work and feel moved to support it, you can make a tax deductible donation here and/or share this on social media. You can also support by subscribing to my philosophy newsletter, What is Called Thinking?